Nursing, narrativity and research: toward a poetics and politics of orality

'Telling' our lives as they happen to us is an extremely pervasive activity in our social world. Through the stories which suture together the multiple ways we can make sense of a life as a nurse, is woven the fabric of a culture. Clinical nursing culture is, as yet, poorly understood and little theorised. By appropriating narrative as a research technology I suggest that we might be better placed to first articulate, and then critique, the complexity and diversity of clinical practice through a postmodern poetics and politics of orality.